Posted
by
Zonk
on Friday September 29, 2006 @11:23AM
from the buddies-from-across-the-pond dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has signed a memorandum of understanding with the BBC for 'strategic partnerships' in the development of next-generation digital broadcasting techniques. They are also speaking to other companies such as Real and Linden Labs. Windows Media Centre platform, Windows Live Messenger application and the Xbox 360 console have all been suggested as potential gateways for BBC content. It is unclear how this impacts on existing BBC research projects such as Dirac, although it is understood that the BBC would face heavy criticism if its content was only available via Microsoft products."

Microsoft is always the big winner. I don't want to give too much detail but I just attended a conference at which the keynote speaker was supposed to be a guy from microsoft's hospitality division. He was coming on second, after some people from the company holding the conference. Each of them (three I think?) mentioned the Xbox 360 even though it really had no relevance WHATSOEVER to what we were talking about - obviously a blatant Microsoft advertisement. Well the Microsoft guy didn't bother to show up

Oh great. So either I install a crappy Real player or a crappy Microsoft player. Or a crappy CODEC for Quicktime that screws up every other app and/or freezes my machine for 30 seconds every time I open a real/windows media file.

Screw all this, the BBC should simply use the real current standard: H.264 with AAC audio. And don't tell me "that's an Apple-only thing" just because Apple happens to like H.264/AAC.

I suppose you're right..... even WMA is better than RA, but that's really like saying the frying pan is better than the fire.

The BBC need to get off their asses and get their video content moved over to a format that is properly cross platform- at the very least Flash video; I know there is trouble with Linux at the moment, but Linux Flash Player v9 should be ready soon.

So sitting here with an un-extended freefox (well it's still called firefox for now) Debian-1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.7-1 the zdnet article is blocked out by a "click here to get this plugin" box. Thankfully I get some gifs instead in konqueror where I can read the story just fine. And they coplain when people block ads? Muppets!

Bill Gates said: "Microsoft's strength is in driving digital innovation, and our vision is to open up rich, new consumer experiences that allow people to enjoy digital content anytime, anywhere and on any device.

"This vision fits squarely with the BBC's charter to lead the industry in delivering content that is compelling and accessible."

It's the last word there which is giving me qualms. Just how does signing agreements with the most proprietary business on earth qualify as extending access?

Most proprietary business on Earth? Most businesses have proprietary information, and it's USUALLY in their best interest (read: their stockholders best interest) to maintain that. At least they're not suing everyone who uses the word 'podcast'.

However pressure may be placed on the BBC to make it difficult,or downright impossible for Non-MS software/OS users to partakein their media experience. Hasn't history repeated itself enoughfor our generation to catch on to this?Microsoft has a bad habit of making other companies proprietaryto suit their own portfolio.

This may be all that MS has to grasp on to, once they are out of thePC O.S. business.....except for all those vague U.S. patents.

There are graveyards of companies that have signed "memos of understanding" with Microsoft.

Whenever Microsoft gets whatever it signed this agreement to get, probably to stop something potentially competitive, then *something* will go awry that will allow Microsoft to get out of the deal without having giving anything in return.

There are graveyards of companies that have signed "memos of understanding" with Microsoft.

Given that the BBC is a publically funded content provider (and not a technology selling business) it would be pretty tough for MS to damage their business model! It appears more akin to the deals Microsoft strikes with universities and governments than to the deals Microsoft strikes with other businesses.

Given that the BBC's business model is to send lots of people to your door to harass you until you pay their "licence fee", and they have a government granted monopoly on that; I don't think MS will be putting the Beeb out of business any time soon.

I pay a hell of a lot of money to the BBC every year*, all I want in return is that all of their digital content to be available through open source technology... this is a step in the wrong direction, or at best a side step. Why can't they also make it work with something like Helix player?

*which they largely squander on stupidly high pay for the executives whilst sacking many of the people responsible for content - Damn them.

I pay a hell of a lot of money to the BBC every year*, all I want in return is that all of their digital content to be available through open source technology... this is a step in the wrong direction, or at best a side step. Why can't they also make it work with something like Helix player?

One reason is that if the BBC does anything that damages commercial interests, it gets into trouble. It is part of the 10-yearly charter review process that the BBC needs to avoid damaging the marketplace. It nearly go

The Helix player is an empty framework. To make it do much of anything useful, you have to add propritary audio/video codecs.

Audio is a straight forward, as Vorbis isn't bad, but Video is tough.

Theora is perpetually unfinished, and it's no better than the decade-old VP3 codec.VP3 is extremely CPU-intensive (think: H.264) if you use resolutions that (uncompressed) are larger than your CPU cache... That means VCD resolution MAX for any decent

The BBC is funded by the "TV Tax"... if you own a television and live in the U.K., you don't really have a choice.Although I suppose you could put it in a faraday cage in your basement and just evade the tax -- I heard once that they used to drive around in detection vans, listening for the RF signals of TVs, and then compare that to the list of people who paid. Rather creepy, if you ask me.

I wonder how they would deal with a computer that had a TV tuner card installed? You could definitely 'watch TV' with

I wonder how they would deal with a computer that had a TV tuner card installed? You could definitely 'watch TV' without owning a TV these days... a HTPC with a tuner card, and then just use a suitably big monitor, or a DLP projector. No TV, just a computer, but you'd have all the capabilities.

If you have a TV tuner card, that counts. If you don't have a licence then you can be prosecuted. The TV licencing folk are like pitbulls, and they have some similar rights as baliffs the way I understand it.

I hate the TV licence. When I first moved out from home, I did not own a TV but the licence people still sent me letters saying "You don't appear to have a TV licence, please get one." I phoned them and said I don't have a TV, they still sent letters. I replied to these letters, but there is no convincing them you don't own a TV. A few more letters and they were threatening to send the inspectors round. I found this link [marmalade.net] which has some various experiences of the TV Licencing strategies.

I agree with the TV license - its the private companies that are now being used to enforce it that are a nightmare - they *do not* have the right to "search" your house for a TV or make you pay any fine unless you have been convicted of an ofence (i.e. court).

They have similar powers to a door to door salesman, except that they are exempt from the competition act, the distance selling regulations, the anti social behavior act, and the protection from harrasment act.

Your right on a few things, but I'll clear up the TV tuner thing. A licence costs about £130 a year.

You need to have a TV Licence to watch TV, or I think to own any equiptment which can be used to watch tv. For a TV tuner for a PC you need to fill out a form to say that you have a licence before you can buy one (or at least I did when I bought one). They do have vans which go round and look for people without licences who are watching TV, although in the first instance they just send threats t

There is the same system in France, but the French public television company is not worth a damn...

It does also pay for the public radio though, which is fairly good (you could stream them in Vorbis, but they switched to MP3)... so it's a compensation. The TV however isn't too good. Could be far worse though.:-/

I can't wait until television companies start requiring people to install WMP11 to watch their content. WMP11 has a horrendous licensing agreement when it comes to DRM infected downloads and your inability to back them up.

Backing up is a bit of a red herring with the BBC as they only really want their content available for a short while (a matter of around a week). If that was the argument against DRM (&WMP11) then I dont think it would make them reconsider for a second.My argument against too much M$ intrusion is that it prevents finding a solution that can run on all platforms. The BBC does have an obligation to make itself as accessible as possible for the licence payer.

It doesn't matter if the BBC content isn't made to be backed up, once you upgrade to 11, I doubt you can backtrack to 10 for the rest of your DRM content you may have purchased. Thus they only need to get one killer ap to require WMP11 and they hook you into their [evil] scheme.

You need to understand who the BBC is and how it is funded. In the UK it is illegal (it is actually a criminal offense) to watch TV unless you, in effect, subscribe to the UK State Broadcaster. This is done by means of the so called 'license fee' - a license to watch TV, all of the receipts from which go to the BBC.As a result, one of the main activities of magistrates courts in the UK is to jail single mothers for not subscribing to the BBC. One conjectures that neither these ladies nor their children h

You need to understand who the BBC is and how it is funded. In the UK it is illegal (it is actually a criminal offense) to watch TV unless you, in effect, subscribe to the UK State Broadcaster. This is done by means of the so called 'license fee' - a license to watch TV, all of the receipts from which go to the BBC.

Actually, it's only illegal to own a receiver on which you receive public broadcasts without paying a license.

The fee is not small. It is well north of $150 a year. It rises every year, faster than inflation. It is probably one of the most regressive taxes ever devised, and falls most heavily on those who can least afford it.

You could say the same about road tax. Much like road tax, it is only paid by people who own and use cars on the public roads. However, most of us realise that the roads are a sufficiently useful public service that this is necessary. Many of us also realise that the same applies both to the TV and the radio.

The BBC also does a very good job of keeping down the number of adverts on commercial TV, too. If you don't believe me, come spend some time over here (the US) and watch some cable (which costs more anually than the license fee). A whole heck of a lot more ads than Channel 5, that's for sure.

What we in the UK need more than anything is to make subscription to the State Broadcaster optional, and to stop jailing poor people for the crime of wanting to watch some other TV channels, while not subscribing to it.

It is. Don't pick up broadcasts, and you won't have to pay the tax. Of course you'll be a bit of a hipocrite if you ever listen to one of the BBCs many radio stations, or ever use its website, but it isn't illegal to be a hipocrite without a license.

And you're also forgetting the final thing. The BBC seems to have the ability topiss off the Government more than any other organisation in England. That is a public service which would be cheap at twice the price.

In the chorus of 'I likes' and 'I don't likes' that followed on the original post, no-one has answered the main question, which is a question about human rights.

Why should people who want to watch TV, but who do not want to watch the BBC, be obliged by law to fund the BBC in order to be able to watch TV?

This has nothing to do with whether its a great British institution, whether British TV is better than US TV, and its nothing like general taxation, and especially nothing like the road tax. And no, it

Why should people who want to watch TV, but who do not want to watch the BBC, be obliged by law to fund the BBC in order to be able to watch TV?

Why should people who send their kinds to private shcools be obliged by law to pay taxes which fund state schools?

Because that is what tax is about. The government taxes to provide things for the good of the population. Loke roads, schools, public boradcasting services, etc. And TV tax is just like road tax. It's the same for everyone and if you don't own the requir

The concept of 'public services' just means in this context 'nationalised service industry'.
The BBC is just a state owned broadcaster. It is no different from CBS or NBC or NPR. Or, in Holland, VARA or VPRO. Its just that it happens to be state owned.
I would still have problems were it funded out of general taxation, as schools are in the UK. But it would be a different problem. I would not believe that there should be a state broadcaster funded out of general taxation. But that is not what is hap

If there were tuition fees for attending a state school, and you had to pay them even if you went to a private school, I would object to that.You only have to pay road tax if you want to take your car out on the public roads. If you only drive it on private roads in your estate, you don't need road tax.

The EU agricultural subsidies lead to cheaper food in the shops. I personally would prefer that the EU govt scrapped them and reduced taxes by the same amount. However, I don't think they could get the Fre

Why should people who want to watch TV, but who do not want to watch the BBC, be obliged by law to fund the BBC in order to be able to watch TV?

I don't know, but they aren't. You only have to pay the license fee if you receive public terrestrial broadcasts (analog or freeview digital). If you don't want that, you can get cable or satellite in most parts of the UK and not pay the license fee (depending on your contract, you may or may not be able to pay to receive the BBC channels over these services).

You could say the same about road tax. Much like road tax, it is only paid by people who own and use cars on the public roads. However, most of us realise that the roads are a sufficiently useful public service that this is necessary. Many of us also realise that the same applies both to the TV and the radio.

Yes, under the current system, most people want to help fund the BBC. However, tv licences are a very bad way of doing it.

If taxes are indeed essential, is there any reason not to use means testin

Since an organization's revenue stream will ultimately determine its biases, the BBC is funded independantly of the tax system. Charging a license fee in a "one-viewer-one-vote" fashion avoids conflicts of interest in covering both the private sector and state affairs. This helps dispell greed and political interference in how it goes about its job.

If the BBC received significant funds from tax revenue, then it would be a state-controlled broadcaster.

If they scaled the fee according to an individual's means, then their bias would slant toward serving the interests of the wealthy (which is what many anti-licensing activists very badly want).

A flat fee may not be a good model for many services. But for an organization that is supposed to serve the entire public without bias, to reflec that society which it serves, and to serve as a watchdog, IMO you cannot do better.

By just being in the wider broadcasting market, they change it for the better.

People who pay more taxes are richer. Richer people get extra votes (the normal one, plus all the politicians they can afford to bribe/lobby). If the BBC was tax-funded then the "no taxation without representation" thing would come in and the politicans would gain direct control over the BBC (which they do not currently have - the BBC operates under an independent charter, which is very difficult to modify).

"The British public does not want parliament screwing up the only broadcaster left who actually cares about their viewers, instead of their advertisers."

That is not to say they won't ever try to put one over on the British public.

Here in the USA, we have PBS which is beholden to the federally-funded CPB and is chock-full of sponsorship announcements/ads. The result is a particularly pallid, toothless news bureau. We occassionally see informative and critical programming in the form of NOW or Frontline, but

no taxation without representation
It's pretty much a tax right now, and I get no explict representation. Saying that if we made it means-tested, we'd need to have proportional representation doesn't follow.

Richer people get extra votes
While this does tend to occur in Republics, it's not like someone gets extra votes for every £10k extra they earn. Bribery is reserved to the extremely rich, and it most likely goes on right now, even with the BBC. Bias is something that is very easy to create.

It's actually stronger than that AFAIK: you need to pay a license fee if you own equipment for receiving television signals. Doesn't matter if you swear blind that you never switch it on or that it's for research purposes etc.

The fee is not small. It is well north of $150 a year. It rises every year, faster than inflation. It is probably one of the most regressive taxes ever devised, and falls most heavily on those who can least afford it.

Dude. That's *12* dollars a month... 12 dollars! And it's on a f'ing luxury (yes, TV is a luxury... if you're a single mother who can't spare $12/month, you've got other problems and should probably just sacrifice the damn TV). In exchange, you have world-class media coverage on multiple formats, and online content that's only just being seen in other countries, and most of it without commercials! Seriously, you don't understand how great you have it.

If the alternative is that I have to pay more money for crappier content *and* have to watch 20 minutes of commercials per hour... I'll pay the damn $12, thank you very much.

Parent comment is at best, biased, bordering on lies. For a start, you cannot go to prison for evading the license fee, the punishment is a £1000 fine. Secondly, although growing slightly above inflation, it has only gained £11.50 since 1968, which is fair enough IMO, considering the Internet content and 4 extra TV channels added since then, as well as several Radio channels (the fee pays for radio programming on the BBC as well). Thirdly the BBC is actually the Third largest magazine publisher

A report on the imprisonment of fine defaulters claimed that:defaulters on low incomes are often imprisoned on the grounds of 'culpable neglect', as the court judges that they have spent money on other priorities than the fine. Many such defaulters are in practice imprisoned because of an inability to manage on a low income. (Penal Affairs Consortiu

Nice libertarian rant - I'm sure you could make the case that every tax is unjust. You shouldn't be charged with a criminal offence for not paying your income tax because you didn't get a heart transplant on the NHS this year, should you? Why should you pay for schools when you're in full-time employment and have no kids? Or pay for the police when you didn't commit any crimes? Or... well, the list goes on. The problem with that way of thinking is it's bollocks. What you're paying for is the safety net, the

My complaint is that I have chosen not to own a TV. This doesn't stop TV Licencing from harassing me. They simply won't take no for an answer.

Now, I return all mail from them unopened, and when they arrive at my door, I inform them that I am withdrawing their implied licence to stand on my door step, and that unless they have a court warrant, they should leave immediately. There is no point in being nice to them.

As a result, one of the main activities of magistrates courts in the UK is to jail single mothers for not subscribing to the BBC. One conjectures that neither these ladies nor their children have the slightest interest in watching the BBC, but they will pay for it anyway, and if not, go to jail.

That paragraph is laughable, if you own a TV you must pay for a TV license, its a bit like a tax, but only applied to people who can afford a TV and want to make use of that "luxury", you can

Whilst I agree it is ridiculous that the UK courts hand out severe sentences for non-payment of the license fee, I disagree with you on just about every point you raise.

As a British citizen, I consider the BBC to be one British thing we can be very proud of. From a TV-only perspective, about 10% of what the BBC broadcast is of interest to me personally (I'm a Dr Who/sci-fi/documentary/drama fan with no interests in sport) but I also listen to a lot of BBC radio, especially Radio 4 for comedy and drama sho

I'm sorry, but if the alternative is Fox News, I'll pay the bloody license fee and be damned happy with it. Seriously, the BBC is well worth it. It appears most Americans on Slashdot would kill to have what we have.

See Hear is a programme that if there was no BBC, we'll never get. Not only that, they also provide signed (shows with a BSL interpreter in the corner) re-runs of popular shows at late night Thursday (ie at a time when few people are watching - so we can record them) - again something no commerical channels will do.

Sky used to regularly sign programmes late night (although I can't remember any recently). I never memorised days and dates when exactly, as I'm not deaf, but Relic Hunter was signed last year

I've read the article (pretty short actually) and this "memo" kind of reminds me of "No Technical Objection" letters I've written and received from time to time. They authorize nothing and they imply no committment. In the end, it's just a way to go back to our customer with, "yea, we discussed this with {company} and they seem OK with it. See? they ever signed a memo."

Linden Labs means Second Life [secondlife.com], which could mean some VERY interesting things in the near-future of broadcasts. I know a number of events organised by news studios and bands have already taken place inworld, but this sounds a lot more solid than the minor contracts before. Screw Microsoft, I wanna see the BBC go virtual.

Couldn't happen.The bbc isn't actually a private company that can be sold. It's a state owned (but not state controlled) organisation with a charter to serve the public, that also fulfills, as part of it's charter, essential services, shipping forecasts, world service etc.

It's not like other tv companies, certainly not like american tv companies. The term company isn't apropriate either.There is no way microsoft could assure the uk public that they could or would maintain these services, some of them make n

british telecom was not something that needed to operate in the same way as the bbc. They don't make for a good comparison. It was also a monolith (well ok, it still is, but at least now it turns the odd buck).ITV was, and remains, a privatelly owned company, not publically owned. They operate in a very different way to the bbc.

Not that all publically owned companies were good. I happen to think that we benefitted from the sale or closure of many, not because it was nice to do, it wasn't, but because it clo

Young man, back in the day when all you got from the BBC was a crackly reception on the rabbit ears people were busy copying tapes of shows and giving them to each other because they couldn't get the content any other way. The BBC was slow to move into selling what we called "audio cassettes" and "video cassettes" because they were funded directly by the government and everyone in the kingdom had to pay a "license fee". The BBC used this money to create their own content and let anyone that wanted do thei

They would almost certainly have to break contracts to release this content without DRM.

The BBC have two types of content:

Bought-in content

Home-grown content

You might be right for the bought-in content, but for the home-grown content, the contracts they'd be breaching would be with BBC Worldwide, who, if I'm not mistaken, get the distribution rights to all BBC-produced shows a few days after broadcast. This was the main reason for the BBC's iMP destroying downloaded content after 7 days.

If it weren't for the DRM that so many people complain about, the BBC would not even be able to make alot of its content available on the internet. They would almost certainly have to break contracts to release this content without DRM.

They should start refusing those contracts. They're a public broadcaster. They have a responsibility to act in the interests of the public.

Um...most people have the ability to play Windows Media files at some level (yes, even on Linux, try VideoLAN). That might be why. Maybe Microsoft will help with Dirac? Long shot, but stranger things have happened. We know nothing about what's in the memo, so speculation on this front is more or less unfounded anyw